“Was it really like that," Janet Foster asked her husband Bob, a veteran advertising man, after watching an episode of the television series “Mad Men.”

His answer was a bit more detailed than a simple “yes.”  

So Foster began writing “Ad Man: True Stories from the Golden Age of Advertising.” He completed it in a month and a half.

The e-book shares stories from his career in advertising sales at major publications and network television.

“It was wilder, boozier, sexier, more,” he told dinner guests at Boothbay Harbor Yacht Club Tuesday evening, July 24. Those fortunate enough to be in the audience heard Foster recount some of the more interesting and humorous stories from his work in the business.

A legacy student at Bowdoin College who still holds the record for most expulsions (three), Foster made his first foray into advertising when he walked into the Time & Life building in New York looking for work. The building is the very same that, on television, houses the “Mad Men” advertising agency Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.

Foster started in the merchandising department at Life Magazine. “It was a fantastic place.” Then came sales workfor Newsweek in Cleveland, "a terrible place,” he said.

His career included work for Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated and CBS, among others.

On his first day of work at “black rock,” as the CBS building in New York was known, he walked into a frantic advertising department.

“They were all kinds of upset,” Foster recalled. He said people were saying, “If we run that show tonight we’ll never see another dime.” The object of all the concern? The debut of Archie Bunker in Norman Lear’s “All in the Family.”

Foster’s career included incredible perks like golfing with Arnold Palmer. He was surprised when he outdrove Palmer on a hole at Latrobe Country Club. He pocketed that ball, “and have not shot a stroke of golf since,”  he said.

He remembers having to travel with Captain Kangaroo, Bob Keeshan. "We had to watch the guy,” because Keeshan so enjoyed the ladies, Foster said.

And at the talk at BHYC, Foster divulged a long kept secret about the Prometheus statue and fountain at Rockefeller Center. He worked for Bob Keenan at CBS and once Keenan and a colleague bet $100 that the water in the pools near NBC was shared by the fountain at Prometheus’ feet.

The bet was on, one of the men provided soap and the resulting mess – bubbles covering the statue – was documented in the first full color photo on the front page of the New York Times.

Work eventually brought Foster to Maine and he lived aboard a 47-foot schooner which took a year to fix up. He met wife Janet and the two left Maine in 1982 and lived in the Bahamas and the Caribbean. They permanently returned to Boothbay Harbor six years ago.  

“I don’t understand it. It’s still about eyeballs, but I don’t know how they measure it,” Foster said about internet advertising. He is keenly aware of the shrinking magazine publishing industry, ”It’s sad to see the publications get skinnier.”   Overall, he said, it was great fun and despite the television series, “Never once was anyone ever referred to as a ‘mad man.’”

BHYC’s author series started in 2016. Carole Cochran chairs it. Cochran diligently researches authors over the winter, finalizing the series each April for the club’s calendar.

She looks for speakers who “are knowledgeable and will make people think,” including authors of both fiction and non-fiction.

The rest of the 2018 series will offer Lynne Olson (“Citizens of London”) on Aug.  7, Sandra Neily on Aug. 14, Louis Sell on Aug.  28 and Linda Greenlaw on Sept. 4. Members often bring guests to the dinners.

Call 633-5750 for more information.

A recording of Bob Foster’s remarks at BHYC can be found on the Boothbay Region Community TV website at:

 http://www.boothbaytv.com/single-post/2018/07/24/The-Fantastic-Stories-Of-Robert-C-Foster-III

 Foster’s e-book can be purchased at:

(https://www.amazon.com/Ad-Man-Stories-Golden-Advertising-ebook/dp/B007EE73U0/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1532622377&sr=1-1&keywords=robert+foster+advertising)